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Obama administration rejects Keystone pipeline

President Obama, denouncing a "rushed and arbitrary deadline' set by congressional Republicans, announced Wednesday that he was rejecting a Canadian firm's application for a permit to build and operate the Keystone XL pipeline, a massive project that would have stretched from Canada's oil sands to refineries in Texas.

Obama said that a Feb. 21 deadline set by Congress as part of the two-month payroll tax cut extension had made it impossible to do an adequate review of the project proposed by TransCanada, but he left open the door to the possibility that a new proposal might pass regulatory muster.

"This announcement is not a judgment on the merits of the pipeline, but the arbitrary nature of a deadline that prevented the State Department from gathering the information necessary to approve the project and protect the American people,' the president said in a statement.

This is the second time the Obama administration has tried to deflect ...